University of Virginia Library

A GRIEVOUS MISTAKE.

A FEW days ago, a young man who had been sick but a week died. His widow sent word of the mournful event to her brother, who was at work harvesting for a farmer near Croton Falls, N.Y. When he got the intelligence, he made haste to Danbury, some thirty miles; but, owing to delay of several kinds, did not reach here until the friends got back from the burial. The suddenness of the death, and the fact that the man whom he had seen in health but three weeks before was dead and buried, was a severe shock to him. He spoke about it several times in a dazed sort of a way, and would break off, in inquiring the particulars of the last sickness, to comment upon the dreadful suddenness of the affair.

"And now he is buried," he added at the close of the bereaved women's recital, "and we shall never see him again. It don't seem possible that George is gone. Don't cry, Maria. It's hard on you; but it can't be helped. You did every thing

you could to prevent it, you know." He stopped here, and nervously worked his fingers, which were clasped together over his knees. After a moment he added, "It was just three weeks ago last night that he came in with that new black suit. I remember his standing up there by the chair," indicating the spot with his eyes, while his hands still continued to play nervously together, "with 'em on; and how they fitted him! I never see George look so well in all my life as he did that night; and I was speaking to mother about it the next day. And now he is dead and buried. I can't make it seem possible. I"—

"We buried him in that suit of clothes," said she, interrupting, "and"—

"What!"

They were both on their feet now. He stood there with his hands separated and clinched, a ghastly pallor on his face, and his eyes fairly starting from their sockets. Brought to her feet by the strength and suddenness of his exclamation, she stood before him in pallid wonder, with the quiver of a nameless fear on her lips.

"Do you mean ter say," he gasped, "that you chucked a new suit of clothes under ground like that?"

"Tom!" she cried, holding up both hands in a horror of protest.

"Don't Tom me!" he screamed with a bitterness

indescribable. "Don't speak to me at all, you witless woman! I can't bear with you! I hate you! A nice sister you are!" It was fearful, the depth of irony in this expression. "You deserve a brother, you do! Oh, yes! An' him and me the same size too." He clinched his hands tighter than before, and strode up and down the room. "I wonder what keeps me from sinkin' right through this floor," he passionately added. "To grow up with a sister like that, and she a-chuckin good clothes into the ground, with a brother that ain't hardly a decent rag to his back! Forty dollars' worth of clothes for worms to cavort around in!"

And, with a groan of despair, he sank heavily into a seat.

"Tom!" gasped the unhappy woman in a voice of horror, "are you crazy?"

"Crazy!" he shrilly repeated. "If I ain't crazy, is it your fault, you miserable sister! Crazy! It's enough to make the hosts of heaven crazy to see forty dollars' worth of clothes chucked to ten cents' worth of worms."

She buried her white face in her hands, and sobbed outright for shame and agony.

"There's no use crying over spilt milk," he gloomily observed. "You've done it, and that's an end of it, and can now have the consolation of knowin' that you've injured an own brother. Another time I guess you'll be a little more careful how you fire a new suit of clothes into the ground."

And, with this prophecy, he morosely strode out of the house.